Australia can be a ‘reasonable’ moderator to ease US-China tensions: ex-foreign minister Julie Bishop

As Australia-China ties stabilise under PM Albanese, Canberra is capable of being a ‘logical’ voice if tensions came to a head over Taiwan, Bishop said
Despite Australia’s tricky balancing act, Canberra should continue to deploy soft diplomacy ‘because military conflict is very costly’, she added

Australia

Su-Lin Tanin Singapore

Published: 7:56pm, 26 Jul 2023

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Former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop has said the country, respected as a “reasonable” nation on the world stage, can serve as moderator to the tensions between the United States and China.

Speaking at the press club in Canberra on Tuesday, Bishop said the Anthony Albanese government had “done a good job” in stabilising tensions with mainland China since coming into office in May 2022, and was capable of being a moderating voice if tensions were to spill “into anything even close to military conflict over Taiwan”.

“I believe that they will be joined by virtually every other nation in the region. I can’t think of anyone who thinks that conflict over Taiwan is a good idea,” Bishop said.

“People want to know what we think, because we’re reasonable, and we’re logical. And we are usually rather objective about the positions that we put forward, always highly conscious of the fact that we must act in Australia’s national interest.”

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Bishop served as foreign minister in Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull’s centre-right coalition government between 2013 and 2018, when the conflict between Australia and China began to smoulder, especially after Canberra banned Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from taking part in Australia’s 5G roll-out in 2018.

Tensions between the next conservative government, led by Scott Morrison, and China escalated when his administration called for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, incurring Beijing’s wrath for being blamed for the pandemic.

The fallout led to Beijing imposing restrictions on Australian exports including coal and wine for several years, with some of those blocks slowly being lifted.

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Despite that, Australia is ready to be a “moderator” on tensions in the region as it remained “well-regarded in foreign circles” and other countries looked to Australia to “call it as it is”, Bishop said.

She said, however, that she would not overestimate Australia’s role in such a complex problem.

While mainland China had vowed to uphold peaceful collaboration and coexistence with all countries, that promise would end over Taiwan, she said.

“That puts a number of countries, including Australia, in an exquisite dilemma,” she said. “Our major trading partner is not also a major defence and strategic ally. In fact, our major trading partner is in open economic conflict with our major defensive strategic ally.”

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Nevertheless, Bishop urged Australia to continue to deploy soft diplomacy when it came to China and the US.

“I think diplomacy, particularly soft power diplomacy, is under done in this country through successive governments and I would like to see much greater focus on our diplomatic efforts … because military conflict is very costly.”

But she would not be drawn into discussing whether the Morrison government squandered away any diplomacy with China, saying that “there were layers and layers of complexity that we can’t begin to fathom”.

Australia’s then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore on August 4, 2018. Photo: Reuters

Bishop welcomed Wang Yi’s reappointment as foreign minister after he replaced Qin Gang, who had disappeared from public view since June, and said Wang knew Australia well and understood the challenges Australia faced in working with China.

Bishop said Australia should continue to engage with China, even after this week’s findings from the country’s productivity commission. The body found the decline in Chinese purchases of Australian goods due to Beijing’s trade restrictions did not significantly impact Australian production because those sales were redirected to other countries.

“Exporters were forced to diversify … but that was always good trade policy,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the fact that China is a significant purchaser of our commodities and continues to be so, whether it be iron ore or natural gas, or lithium and the like.”

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While China was a “challenging partner”, Bishop said Australia needs to be “friends with everyone around the world”.

“A country of our size … we need to be part of the global economy, and China is a significant part of that economy,” she said.

As neighbours in the same region, the need to engage with China was also crucial, Bishop said.

“We want good relations with all nations in the Indo-Pacific, where we disagree we should speak out, but we should manage our disagreements,” she said.

She encouraged Albanese to accept an invitation to Beijing when it was extended. The prime minister was due to visit China this year, although nothing formal had eventuated.